Film Review : Prince Caspian & Hitman

Ok so one Cinema trip and one DVD viewing.  Cinema 1st

Prince Caspian.

Ok, so the first Narnia film was good, a well known story and great film-making, this one was a step into the unknown.  Having only ever read “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” all of the other films were going to be more interesting to me and this one, having read the reviews, was more up my street, “Darker and more battles” seemed to be the theme running through the various reports in the papers and online.  So the question is what did I think???  Well this film was completely spot on, we have the new character, Prince Caspian along with the 4 kids from the first film, rumours had been going round about some kind of friction between the actors playing Caspian and Peter over who was the lead actor and you could almost feel it coming through the screen.  Obviously this is a crucial part of the story with Peter having been High King expecting to lead and Prince Caspian who has drawn an army together himself also expecting to lead.  The film is long, around two and a half hours, however the time seemed to fly past and it certainly did not seem time when the credits rolled.  Without going into the details of the story, the next film “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” should continue the story of Narnia and is scheduled for May 7th 2010, a long time to wait.  I think that off the back of these 2 films, reading the whole series is something that for me is now long overdue.

Hitman.

Hmmmm, for me a computer game tie-in to a film is always something to be avoided.  A Film tie-in to a computer game is not always a good move.  This time round, hmmmmm, not too bad.  Timothy Olyphant plays the title character of Agent 47, a child trained to be one of a group of perfect assassins.  The action in the film is non-stop as Agent 47 tries to uncover why a man he whos he has killed is apparently still alive, whilst being pursued by the FSB (Russian Special Police) and by one dedicated Interpol agent.  Agent 47 finds himself in running gun battles with both of these forces as well as other members of his “Organisation” that appear to want him dead.
Overall an entertaining film, not quite up there as something I would say “You have to watch this” but significantly better than your average game tie-in film.  One to Rent.

Chapter 2 – published

Max let the kitchen door close behind him turned to give his dad a hug to welcome him home.

“Evening Max” he said “have you seen that we have new neighbours?”.

“Yes Dad, has the big removals van gone yet?”

“No they still seem to be unloading, maybe we can go round and offer to give them a hand after dinner” he replied with a smile

“Of Course Dad” Max said with the obligatory roll of the eyes, “I can do the settees while you do the wardrobes!”

“Excellent” his Dad said, “I can let the movers know that we can finish off and they can go home”.

“Sure Dad”

With that Max and his parents sat down to dinner, Chris who had yet to return from Football would have to eat later. As they tucked into Chicken and veg, Max turned his attention to his parents, Sue and David, who always sat on the opposite side of the table, whilst they were eating dinner, they chatted away about their days events. To Max his parents were as good as they could possibly be, they were strict but fair, after all Chris and he rarely got into trouble but when it happened he knew that a long talk followed by a period of enforced “thinking time” at the kitchen table was what they could usually expect, he couldn’t remember ever getting spanked, not that he would ever consider doing something to justify that.

Max knew, from the stories his parents had told him and his brother, that his parents had first met in secondary school and had fallen in love almost at first sight. They had gone through the usual rounds of parties and discos together and before school was finished everyone could see how close they were. When school finished however, they separated as his mum wanted to go to University to study to be a doctor, his dad who was not quite the scholastic star his mother was, had started out working on a building site, beginning as a simple gopher. After 4 years at university Sue had acquired her degree and had headed to medical school, after another 4 years of study she returned to her home town to discover that David was now running a successful group of builders, his skills in man management brought to the fore as he moved up through the ranks, mastering none of the specific skills but identifying areas in which they could improve the business of building houses. In the end he had made himself indespensible on a number of projects and had gathered a group of skilled labourers from those he worked with. They had setup on their own and had made a name for themselves working on a large number of spectacular houses and offices in the local area. With the projects coming in on budget and generally ahead of schedule, they were now the sought after names for any developments.

It was only a few short hours after they met once again at a Sue’s home coming party that all the old feelings came flooding back and they were living together with a month, married within 6 months and Sue was pregnant with Chris within the year.

Sue’s hope of running her own doctors practice were put on hold as the baby would not allow her to dedicate the amount of time required, however she was now quite happily working as a part time doctor within a large practice, which gave her the time to spend with her boys, making a point to always be there when they returned home from school. David’s business had gone from strength to strength and he was now running a large agency supplying highly skilled workers for any building site within a large part of the country and with the skills vetting processes that David had created and the passion that he had spreading throughout his staff, they were quickly becoming a national name. David was also attempting to take a Business Management Degree part time to give him the recognized qualifications that would allow him to take his business to the next level and bid for government contracts which was where the big money could be made.

Today the topic of conversation seemed to be about the new plan that David had been asked to look at for a Research Center on the outskirts of their town. Lots of laboratories and special requirements were specified in the plan and David was trying to decide if the potential profits were worth the risk of having to train up some of his staff to cope with the required regulations or hire in new staff. By the time dinner had finished his mum and dad had pretty much decided that whilst they needed to ask more questions the profit was just too big to pass up. That was generally how all decisions were made in their family, everyone who wanted a say could speak their piece before a more informed decision was made. Max though had never really felt the confidence to speak up, but then again he never really disagreed with any of the discussions.

After the dishes had been cleared away and Max and his dad had washed up, his mum asked if Max wanted to come with her when she popped next door to meet the new neighbours. With Chris still not home yet and with nothing else particularly coming to mind, Max nodded in the affirmative and followed his mother out of the front door.

It was a surprisingly warm evening for the middle of March, so neither Max or his mother bothered to grab coats and they wandered up their driveway to the pavement and walked down the road to where the two removals men were just packing up. Standing by the gate, the woman Max had seen earlier was just shaking hands with what was probably the senior of the 2 men.

“Hi I’m Sue and this is my youngest son Max, we live next door”.

“Hi, I’m Lilly” she responded, “my daughter Sarah is around here somewhere, it’s nice to meet you”

“My husband is currently in the house and my eldest son is not yet back from school, he plays for the football team”.

At this point a voice drifted out from the front door, “Mum were did the box go with my radio in it?”.

“Sarah” Lilly called “come out here a moment”.

Max glanced towards the house and was greated by, what he would in later years describe as, a vision of beauty the likes of which he had never seen. However at this time, what he saw was a girl, slightly younger than him, come racing out of the house in a pair of jeans and pale blue t-shirt, both of which had obviously seen better days and hair that hung down to her shoulders although currently caked in dust. However for now Max was captivated by her face and especially her eyes, they appeared to have an iridescent quality to the blue that was now sparkling in the setting sun and Max had to blink to stop himself staring at her. Sarah looked back at Max briefly obviously wondering what he was staring at and then turned to her Mother.

“Sarah, this is Mrs…” Lilly paused, suddenly unsure.

“Harris” Sue supplied.

“Sarah, this is Mrs Harris and her son Max.”

“Nice to meet you Sarah” Lilly replied.

“Hi” Sarah said, somewhat shyly and turned towards Max.

Max licked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry and stood there as Sarah regarded him. He suddenly became aware of the fact that his t-shirt was crumpled and probably not particularly clean after the time spent in the treehouse. He unconciously ran a hand through his hair and then quickly dropped it back to his sides as he realised what he was doing. To him the time between Sarah saying “Hi” and looking at him was dragging along and it could have conceivably been hours since those blue eyes had focused on him and he felt foolish because of how it made him look. The more that thought ran through his head the worse it made him feel and it was with an almost in-human effort of will that he finally managed to get words out of his mouth. “Hi I’m Max” he said and then felt embarrased as he realised that Sarah’s mother had already told her that.

“Hi” responded Sarah with an ease that made Max feel even more self concious about the trouble he had experienced with his simple statement.

He was eventually broken out of his daze as he realised that Sarah had asked her mother a question and was heading back towards the house and his mother was inviting Sue around for tea the next day. All the while Max was now staring at the open front door through which Sarah had vanished, not understanding exactly why he felt that his life had just been turned on it’s head.

Ok Ok, I know it’s been a little quiet round here….

Yes it’s been over 2 weeks, would like to say I have been busy, but it would be a big fat lie.  The wife and I went away for a rather relaxing stay with her mum & step-dad, unlike many people I get on very well with the in-laws and really find I relax when we are down there.  Given the holiday also co-incided with her birthday and a rather nice spell of weather things were great.  Spent time on the beach, ate some nice meals (also tried squid for the first time, something I will definately do again) and generally relaxed.  I had planned to spend a lot of time writing my novel, however with the weather going from what had been forecast to be a wet few days, the laptop stayed off most of the time.  However now I am back Chapter 8 needs finishing.

Anyway hopefully I will get back to regular posting and writing now.

Couple of things to review currently, firstly lets start with Civilisations Revolution for the 360.  I am really having a hard time with this game, I love it and enjoy playing it, but every time I finish a game I feel un-fullfilled.  It’s just too small and too short, it’s still really good and Deity level is bloody hard, but it’s still not as much of a challenge as say Civ IV feels because of the complexity and scale of options.  With Civ IV I can have a game that takes months to play due to the the size of the maps, no. of units etc, but Civ Rev can be over in a couple of hours.  My recommendation is that if you have never played Civ before (shame on you) the get it, it’s great fun, if you have played Civ before and enjoyed it, get it you will love it.  If you a Civ nut, then probably get it but it’s going to leave you feeling like something is missing.

Film Review : Shoot-em Up

Ok so the plot goes like this, people fire guns at Clive Owen, Clive Owen fires back people die.  Simple premise and little other plot for some time into the movie.  If you like action films this one is not going to disappoint, the stunts are amazing although so far past  un-believable it’s untrue.  Not the worlds greatest film by some miles, but it certainly is the best film for having a “I’ve been killed and a carrot was involved” body count running into double figures.

Cloverfield – Take 2

Yep Cloverfield came out on DVD yesterday and it wasn’t exactly a difficult decision to buy it, after enjoying it immensely at the cinema back at the start of the year.  The big concern I had was how it would translate from the large screen to the smaller (well 32 inches isn’t really that small….) screen, the answer was very well.  The cgi effects still look awesome and ‘Clover’ really looks impressive, yes as a second viewing there is a definite lessoning of the shock factor, Melina’s standout moment was hardly a surprise.  Having said that the oppotunity to watch various sections of the film again, pause and also slow-mo forward really displayed the skill that the film-makers had used to get the effects they did.

I am currently wading my way through the film extras and it’s amazing to see the difference between this and other films from the behind the camera perspective.  In most films you re-shoot every scene from multiple angles to get different lighting/perspective, in this there were re-shoots, but it was simply a variation from the one single camera being used.  Watching the way that certain effects were achieved with cameras, literaly being thrown around, was quite a marked change from the locked off cameras that and cameras on tracks.  JJ Abrahms is decidedly making his mark in both the TV and Film arenas and this will I hope be the first of many great films (Star Trek XI has a lot to live up to!!!).

Oh the anticipation

Well Apple finally announced what everyone had been expecting for at least the last 3 months, a new iPhone!!!  Not only that, distributors can now subsidise the cost of the phone, thus we the consumers get an even better deal.  Now I’m with O2, 11 months into an 18 month contract and not 100% sure about what my options were, until I saw the note on the O2 site, stating that I register and they will basically write off my old contract and allow me to switch to a new 18 month contract on the iPhone.  So I’ve registered my interest, checked the specs on the Apple Web site, wiped up the drool off my desk, remembered to register my old handset for re-cycling with Tiscali which will actually pay for the iPhone.  Well that’s 15 mins filled, what the hell am I going to do to fill the time until July 11th when the new phone actually comes out!!!!!

How the hell do you cope???

It’s getting tough I can’t deny it.  With my wife heading for open heart surgery, probably early September, it’s difficult to not let it prey on your mind.  This weekend has been exceedingly tough and with us both now knowing the full details of what is going to happen, it’s hard to get past the bit where they stop her heart without thinking, ok but what if they can’t restart it.  How exactly do you cope with that kind of thinking and how the hell am I supposed to re-assure my wife when she starts asking “but what if it goes wrong”.

Sorry for the melodramatic post on a Monday, we will hopefully return to normal programming tomorrow.

It’s a Mind-freak day

Today I will be mostly nice to everyone.  No scratch that, today I am going to be super nice to everyone (well excluding the man known as Receipt)!!

Why I here you ask, because it freaks them out big style, it’s completely out of character and it keeps them on their toes.  It’s not that I’m nasty to people, it’s just that I tend to project a grumpy/pissed off exterior no matter my mood and people get used to it.  Being really nice and smiling and generally helpful to a fault will freak them out.  I usually manage it once or twice a year and my boss is already twitchy after I greeted her with a cheerful “Good Morning”.

Oh what fun, lets see how long I can maintain the facade.

Product pricing gets ridiculous.

So I was in my local garage this morning and was dismayed to see that the offer of a 500ml bottle of Coke Zero for 69p had finally ended and it was back to its’ ridiculous price of £1.05.  So in the end I grabbed a standard Diet Coke for 95p, quiet why the difference is beyond me but there you go.  So anyway after grabbing that caffeine hit I wandered down to get some peach water which they sell in 2 sizes, 500ml and 1 litre.  Now I always get the 1 litre, because hey programming is thirsty work and also because the 500mls are 65p yet the 1l is 83p no where near double the price.  In recent weeks they have also been offering 2 x 500ml for 90p, so that’s 7p more than a single 1l bottle, however the offer now takes the biscuit.

The current offerings in the shop are as follows,

i) purchase a single 500ml bottle for 65p

ii) purchase 2 x 500ml bottles for 90p

or

iii) purchase a 1l bottle at the reduced price of 45p!!!!!

Is it just me or does someone need to review now they price their offers to make then worthwhile or at the very least so that they don’t overlap!!!